Crypto’s value is from being outside regulatory apparatus, says Arthur Hayes

Miami, FL — Crypto doesn’t need regulation – something that charting the price of bitcoin over successive U.S. governments clearly shows, according to the provocative co-founder of BitMEX and CIO of Maelstrom, Arthur Hayes.

Hayes’ thesis is simple: fiat liquidity – precisely, the printing of more units of fiat money – is the only thing that affects bitcoin’s value proposition.

“If you want to talk about the price of Bitcoin and what’s the fair value, or what’s the future price, all that matters is how many units of fiat are there today,” Hayes told the audience at Consensus Miami 2026. “How many units of fiat will there be in the future, and what’s the pace of this fiat creation?”

While there’s a lot of talk about tradfi and regulators and crypto coming together and having this “bastard child,” the majority of people who attend conferences like Consensus want only to see the number go up, Hayes said. But they forget what has made the price of Bitcoin go from from zero to however many trillions of dollars that it’s worth today, he added, hammering his thesis home:

”The more money that is printed in the U.S. and around the world, the more value that bitcoin will have in fiat currencies,” said Hayes. “And it’s this liquidity part of the equation that really drives the price of bitcoin, and not anything to do with politics.”

Few executives in crypto maintain a social presence as lively, chaotic and strangely insightful as Hayes’. Behind the lapel-grabbing theatrics lies a track record that traders pay attention to. For instance, Hayes was early to the rise of several AI-adjacent tokens, a sector that dominated speculative flows throughout 2024 and 2025. He also championed Zcash (ZEC), which rallied more than 450% over the past year.

Looking back over the last few U.S. administrations, key factors can be picked out that greatly bolstered the value of bitcoin, Hayes said. This started with the bailing out of banks during the banking crisis and printing a lot more money, which sent bitcoin “off to the races.”

More recently, events like COVID, stimulus checks, Biden’s New Green Deal, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have driven up the value of bearer assets like bitcoin and gold.

“This is the value that bitcoin provides outside of the regulatory apparatus,” Hayes said. “It’s precisely the reason that it does not adhere to the regulatory regime that some of you wish to put it under with bills like the Clarity Act and other things.”